Did a speed run of the challenge since I don't know if I have time to retry it; my schedule will be pretty busy in the next weeks. Prolly could have played better and lost less battles (although hax is always ready to ruin everything...) but still was fun and interesting. I used the same team that got me into 1880s for the Outsiders Challenge, since I really enjoyed building and playing it (thinking about an RMT on the topic). Edited the original post with proof. And, first to the finish line!

CAP Head Mod

Yep! My apologies for being unclear. The Dark Horse Project runs off of the past month's statistics, not the past three. Consider your selections from this post. Anything under 5% on the Overused stats for September is fair game.

And in response to ginganinja's run: you need a standard deviation lower than 80. For those of you reading this who don't know what that means, it's the number after the ± on your Glicko2 rating. You need that to make the leaderboard anyways, so this should be self explanatory. Remember, if you have any questions, let us know!

How did you choose your Dark Horse Pokemon for this project? What lead you to choose the Pokemon you did? Did you have regrets or were you happy with your selection?

I've liked 'Croak for a while, having had him in many of my teams. He's amazing in rain, but requires a lot of prediction. The hell of sucker punching a Celebi, only to have it fail and twave you is irritating to say the least. He is excellent against threats such as terrakion, latios, dragonite, and countless others. The amount of times defensive Gliscor stayed in to get ice punched was endless.

How did you go about building a team for your Dark Horse Pokemon? Which kinds of teammates did you consider? What factors contributed to the team you created?

I already had a team featuring him before hand, so I just had to make a few tweaks to that.

Do you think it is more difficult or less difficult to ladder with a Dark Horse Pokemon? Why? Does the element of surprise play a factor in your battles? Is it easier to fight with a "highly used"" team or with Pokemon that are less common?

Croak worked well for what I needed him for. I thought he might be outclassed by Keldeo, but his typing and recovery where absolutely essential. He served as my main check to Terrakion, allowing me to switch to Tornadus-T if earthquake was coming, as well as Conkeldurr if Tornadus was out of action. Many players simply didn't know what to expect either, as it isn't as common, so I guess the surprise factor played its part.

(For Hall of Fame members only) How did you reach the Hall of Fame? Was it easy or difficult? Did having a Dark Horse Pokemon on your team benefit you? What advice would you give to those laddering with Dark Horse Pokemon?

I was close to the top 100 when the ladder reset, and I found it difficult afterwards, due to Garchomp coming down, and the combination of Chomp-Gene-Trio appearing on every team.

I'm gonna carry on with this team to see if I can take it higher, as it's pretty fun to play with! I'll update the post again if I do.

I'm glad that Mew set worked for you, although your Memento set was also awesome in giving your Sweepers the set-up opportunities they need. Which Pokemon worked better for you?

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They both have their merits, however I find Mew more consistent since it can dish out damage to a wider range of threats and does not depend on a Fire Gem to OHKO threats like Scizor or the likes. Also I appreciate the fact that nothing can safely switch and spin, Starmie was really annoying when I was using Uxie since it just switched and forced me to risk Gengar or to play without SR. Also, while Memento eases set-ups, I rarely found myself taking full advantage of it. Many threats aren't OHKO'd by +2 Espeed (Terrakion for example), thus I found myself throwing out attacks to avoid being forced to switch, and this basically gave away the usefulness of Memento since there are many other ways to get a free switch without sacrificing a poke. Keldeo can get a CM up, but then what you're gonna do if they switch into Latios, Tornadus or even Tentacruel? Again, you're forced to just attack to avoid having wasted a turn for a +1 that you cannot take advantage of. This, added to the fact that Mew can come in later to set up SR again, be foddered, or whatnot, pull off a little sweep (it does also that, against unprepared opponents...) makes me conclude that overall Mew is quite better, although that Uxie set was really lovely!

And, about continue laddering...my net just decided to screw my laddering attempt and crashed five f*****g times in 15 minutes, basically destroying my rating. I may start up again with a fresh alt if I find the time (is that allowed right?), although I'm kinda satisfied with the current result. After all, laddering up to 1850+ once could be due to luck, but doing that two times means the team is not that bad at all!

The OP was posted less than 12 hours ago, and we already have people making the HoF. A lot of people probably haven't even noticed this thread yet. I feel like there oughta be a 24-hour grace period, in which multiple people can enter the HoF with the same Pokemon. This would prevent there being any "victims of schedule", who simply weren't able to start the challenge before then.
For those who can't tell, I'm ranting that Sandslash is gone and I haven't even gotten the chance to do a single battle yet. Yes, I am proposing this for personal gain. But you can't deny that it is actually unfair to anyone in my situation.

edit: Changing my alt to Windbreake, because Rainboots Dark Horse got stolen because I neglected to choose a password for it this morning...

Yep! My apologies for being unclear. The Dark Horse Project runs off of the past month's statistics, not the past three. Consider your selections from this post. Anything under 5% on the Overused stats for September is fair game.

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Could the list be updated then, please? It currently says Landorus-T is not eligible but on the September-only statistics he barely makes the cut (4,9%) and, let's be honest, LanDog is pretty cool. I'm pretty sure there are 1 or 2 more mons in this "limbo".

EDIT: Actually, only Metagross is in the "limbo" with Lando-T and he's already been brought up. Derp.

It's fine :P
I was only mad because I've been using Metagross and Sandslash on my team forever. I didn't actually build a team for this, I'm just using the same old one I've been using for like a month. Basically, I'm lazy and wanted to have Sandslash so that I wouldn't have to make a team.

I corrected my list appropriately with Birkal's update about half an hour ago, but lando-t has just enough usage in one of the two percentages to break the 5% barrier. (Compare to keldeo, who has just enough usage in the OTHER percentage.) I chose to cut them both and put them on the list for consistency's sake, and since they were also above 5% in the 3-month stats, it felt logical to me. Basically I was looking at them thinking "okay can I justify cutting one but not the other?" and it was 2 percentages out of 3 being over 5%, so the easiest thing was to take them both.

Here are the Sept-only stats right at the bottom of the barrel (left being percent usage, right being percent real usage):

It's fine :P
I was only mad because I've been using Metagross and Sandslash on my team forever. I didn't actually build a team for this, I'm just using the same old one I've been using for like a month. Basically, I'm lazy and wanted to have Sandslash so that I wouldn't have to make a team.
But you're right, I still got Meta.

edit: PS! ladder is down for me, so I'll come back to laddering in a few hours... man I missed this since March

I was using Lanturn for this challenge, a ResTalk set that worked amazingly well, especially against the Rain Teams that I was seeing a lot. Lanturn is hands down one of the best answers to the combination of Tornadus-T / Thundurus-T / Genesect, and it was really fun to use. I really didn't have any trouble against Rain, but Sun was a pretty difficult matchup. Basically my team was just random hyper offense with a Lanturn for Rain. I had a Rock Polish Landorus for Sun, and Specs Keldeo / Scarf Genesect / Sub SD Terrakion core, with a lead Mew. Hyper Offense was something I've never used before, but it worked pretty damn well. I'm thinking it's the best weatherless playstyle to use, as it performs well against most weather teams. The MVP of this team was definitely Lanturn. Honestly, if you need something for Rain, use this. I definitely need to start using Hyper Offense more, it's crazy fun to use. Thanks for Birkal, Pocket, ginganinja and alkinesthetase for setting this up, and everyone else involved it. I might ladder at a later time to see how much higher I can get, we'll see.

team i used(Move your mouse to reveal the content)team i used (open)team i used (close)

This set is breloom's worst nightmare. While I didn't initially think of breloom when I decided on using Kingdra, I realized that I might as well use sleep talk as the final move since it doesn't really need any other coverage moves (besides maybe hp fire, but the rest of my team more than adequately deals with ferrothorn). Hydro pump is devastatingly powerful in the rain, still potent in the sand, and threatens even most things that resist it. Draco Meteor also deals massive amounts of damage. Dragon pulse is basically for situations where I'm in the rain and have an opportunity to sweep a weakened enemy team. The way I go about handling breloom is switching kingdra in on the obvious spore. As it tries to set up, it's going to get hit by either a dragon pulse, draco meteor, or hydro pump. Draco meteor 1hkos unquestionably, dragon pulse does about 96% so sand damage will finish it off, and Hydro pump is a guaranteed 2hko. With hydro pump, Kingdra is going to quite a lot of damage from the mach punch, but will survive with enough health to finish breloom off.

How did you choose your Dark Horse Pokemon for this project? What lead you to choose the Pokemon you did? Did you have regrets or were you happy with your selection? I just looked at the usage statistics and saw kingdra, so I decided to use it.

How did you go about building a team for your Dark Horse Pokemon? Which kinds of teammates did you consider? What factors contributed to the team you created? The two things I considered most were "What pokemon can I use to cover kingdra's weaknesses?" and "What pokemon should I use to allow kingdra to more easily perform its role." I'll go into more detail about that in my RMT as soon as I finish it.

Do you think it is more difficult or less difficult to ladder with a Dark Horse Pokemon? Why? Does the element of surprise play a factor in your battles? Is it easier to fight with a "highly used"" team or with Pokemon that are less common? For me, I really like laddering with a dark horse. The surprise element that a dark horse gives your team can very frequently make the difference between a lost match and a victory.

(For Hall of Fame members only)How did you reach the Hall of Fame? Was it easy or difficult? Did having a Dark Horse Pokemon on your team benefit you? What advice would you give to those laddering with Dark Horse Pokemon? It was incredibly easy. Kingdra is absolutely amazing and I thoroughly recommend it. My biggest piece of advice would be to not be too caught up in using a team full of standard sets or teams that you've copied from successful RMTs. I say that because whenever I recognize a team that someone has copied, it becomes incredibly easy to beat since I know exactly what sets they are running and even have access to the RMT they used for a reference. Like I said previously, having at least one surprise, unexpected twist on your team is, in my opinion, essential to climbing high on the ladder.